Race Report: City of Oaks Marathon

Last February, I was scheduled to run the Charleston Marathon, but the race was cancelled.  I received a credit from Capstone Races that I could apply toward the entry fee for any of their other races.  After looking at the other races they sponsor, the one that made the most sense for me was the City of Oaks Marathon in Raleigh, NC.  I needed another North Carolina race for my fourth circuit of marathon in all 50 states, and this was a race I could easily fit into my schedule.

The course starts and finishes in downtown Raleigh.  When I saw that I could stay at a hotel that was close to both the start and the finish, there was no question I would stay downtown.  I love the convenience of being able to wait until 15-20 minutes before the race before leaving the hotel.

I flew to Raleigh on Saturday.  Packet pickup was at LeRoy Martin Middle School, which was also the site of the Saturday kids run.  We needed to sign up for a packet pickup time.  I picked a time that allowed me to pick up my race packet on my way into town from the airport.

After packet pickup, I went to lunch at a pizzeria on the edge to downtown.  I waited until after lunch before continuing to my hotel.

I stayed at Hampton Inn in downtown Raleigh.  It was two and a half blocks from the starting line and even closer to the finish line.  When I got there, they didn’t have any rooms ready, so I parked my car and the ramp and set off on foot to do some sightseeing in the downtown area.

Deb and I visited Raleigh in 2008.  I know we did some sightseeing in the downtown area, but that was so long ago that I can’t remember what we saw.  This time, I started by walking over to the state capitol.

As I was walking around the capitol, I saw a trolly turning onto Fayetteville Street.  That’s mostly a shopping district.  I’m pretty sure that’s one of the areas Deb and I explored 14 years ago.  This year, I focused more on architecture.

Next, I walked over to the Executive Mansion.  I couldn’t get a good picture from the front, because there were some canopies in the way.  Here’s a side angle.

From there, it was a short walk to Historic Oakwood.  This is a neighborhood with some handsome older homes.

A few of the homes in the Oakwood neighborhood still had Halloween decorations up.

After walking down Oakwood Avenue, I explored some of the neighboring streets, which also had examples of the older architectural styles.

When I got back to the hotel, they had a room ready, so I checked in and unloaded the car.  By now, I had been on my feet for the last two hours.  My phone and I both needed recharging, so I relaxed at the hotel until it was time for dinner.

When I did a Google search of things to see in downtown Raleigh, the list included a few restaurants.  They tended to be BBQ restaurants, but I didn’t want to eat anything that heavy before the race.  Another place was the Raleigh Beer Garden.  Besides having more than 350 different beers on tap, they also serve food, including pizza.  It was just around the block from my hotel, so it wasn’t hard deciding where to eat.  The hard part was deciding which beers to sample.

Earlier, I noticed a sign at Hampton Inn mentioning construction and asking guests to please excuse the noise and mess.  At the front desk, there was a bowl with packages of ear plugs.  There were also a few individually packaged pairs of ear plugs in my room.  I never noticed any construction, but I later realized there was another reason for the ear plugs.

Hampton Inn has a policy of giving any guest a full refund if there’s a problem with their room and management isn’t able to resolve it for them.  This hotel was making one exception.  I found this notice in the bathroom.

To summarize, the hotel is in a noisy nightlife district, and the noise can make sleeping difficult.  They can give you ear plugs, but they can’t make the noise go away.  I always sleep with ear plugs, and the ones I brought were probably better than the ones the hotel provided.

I got very little sleep the night before I arrived.  In fact, in the last week, I only got more than four hours of sleep once.  After dinner, I went to bed early.  I eventually woke up and heard some noise, but by then I already had four hours of sleep in the bank.  I had some trouble getting back to sleep, but I probably got another four hours of sleep before I had to get up.

The marathon started at 7:00 AM.  I set my alarm for 5:30.  The race was on the same morning that we set the clocks back, which made it easier to get up early.  Going to bed at 7:00 PM the night before also didn’t hurt.

It was an unseasonably warm day.  When the race started, it was 65 degrees.  The forecast high was 81, and I expected it to get into the upper 70s before I finished the race.  With that in mind, I wasn’t inclined to push too hard for a fast time.

When I signed up for the race, I didn’t know much about the course.  A good portion of it is on a paved trail through the House Creek Greenway.  When I reviewed the elevation profile, I didn’t see much in the way of big hills, but there are lots of smaller undulations.

I run best when I can stay in a consistent rhythm.  I don’t run as fast when I have to constantly speed up or slow down going over small hills.  I’m still recovering from a high hamstring injury.  I feel OK when I’m running a nice consistent pace, but I need to avoid making sudden accelerations.  That was another reason to just go easy today and save my best effort for another race.

Besides the marathon, there was a 5K, a 10K, and a half marathon.  The 5K started 20 minutes later, but the marathon, half marathon, and 10K all started together.  I didn’t want to go out at the same pace as runners doing a 10K race, so I was careful not to line up too close to the starting line.

I apparently lined up too far back.  When the gun went off, it took a long time for the people in front of me to start moving.  It took more than a minute before I crossing the starting line.  That’s OK.  This is a chip-timed race.  Even after starting, however, I felt like I was held back by a wall of runners who were starting at a pace that felt uncomfortably slow.  It didn’t help that the first few blocks were slightly uphill.

I worked to get around people so I had more room to run at my own pace.  I wasn’t trying to run fast.  I just wanted to be able to run at a pace that felt natural.

As we rounded the first turn, I finally found plenty of room to run.  Now we were going downhill, and I couldn’t help but get going too fast.

I wasn’t even done with the first mile before I felt sweat from head to toe.  I paid close attention to the forecast temperatures, but I never thought about the humidity.  As it turns out, the humidity probably bothered me more than the heat did.

I finished the first mile in 9:13.  That would’ve been about right in a flat race with cool weather, where I was trying to improve my time.  On this course and in these conditions, it was too fast.  In the second mile, I tried to ease up.  That was easier said than done.  By now, I was already surrounded by other runners who started at the same pace.  Also, the second mile was mostly downhill.  I wanted to slow down, but that mile was a few seconds faster than the first one.

For the first several miles, it seemed like we were always going slightly uphill or slightly downhill.  None of these hills were particularly steep, but it was rarely flat.  I gradually eased into a more reasonable pace, but it took several miles.

Early in the race, there were lots of turns.  I knew we would eventually head west out of downtown, but I lost my sense of direction.  In the early miles, I quickly lost track of where we were.

The first hill that I found to be tiring came during the 6th mile.  I could feel myself slowing down on this one.  My first five miles were all faster than 10 minutes.  Mile six was the first one that was slower.  After that, almost all of them were slower than 10 minutes.  That’s probably the pace I should’ve run from the beginning.

There were several places where the courses for the different races would diverge, but later they would merge together again.  As a result, there might be runners around you who had run a different distance.

Just before the 10K mark, we turned left onto a major street.  I saw runners on the other side of the street who were going the opposite direction.  At first, I assumed they must be doing the half marathon, and they had reached their turnaround point.  Then I noticed the color of their race bibs.  They were all doing the 10K race.  I passed the 10K mark for the marathon and then saw a sign marking the four-mile mark for the 10K race.

We ran almost eight miles before the marathon and half marathon diverged.  I initially found it odd that we would go that far before the half marathon runners would head back toward downtown.  Then I thought about all the turns in the early miles.  We had covered a total distance of almost eight miles, but as the crow flies, we were only two or three miles from where we started.

At eight miles, we turned onto the greenway.  Before, we were on city streets.  Now, we were on a paved trail.  Like the streets, the trail never seemed to be flat.  It was always either uphill or downhill.  At first, the hills were fairly long and gradual.  It was only a mater of time, however, before I started to encounter hills that forced me to slow down.

I have a friend who lives near the course.  I hadn’t seen Julie in several years, but when she found out I was running, she told me she and her husband Miles would be watching for me along the greenway.

The first time I saw Julie and Miles was around 11 miles.  I had sent Julie a photo, so she would know what I was wearing.  I didn’t know what she and Miles would be wearing, but after seeing them once, it was easier to look for them.

The section of the course along the greenway was out-and-back.  I was just past 11 miles when I saw the lead runner coming back.  I didn’t know exactly how far it was to the turnaround, but I knew it was well past the halfway point of the race.  It could plausibly be as far as the 16-mile mark.  If so, this guy was already almost 10 miles ahead of me.  That seemed unlikely, but he had a huge lead over everyone else.  I ran at least a mile farther before I saw the second-place runner.

Along the greenway, we sometimes had views of streams or ponds.  I was sometimes tempted to stop and take a picture.  I had my phone with me, but I never stopped.  Already, I felt like I needed to press on.  I was afraid if I stopped to take a picture, I would have trouble getting started again.

When I reached the halfway point, I was surprised to see my average pace was 10 minutes per mile.  That’s only because I was running faster in the early miles.  My most recent mile took almost 11 minutes.  That would become the new normal.  I never got below 10:30 gain, and I was usually closer to 11:00.

I still didn’t know how much farther it was to the turnaround.  I was half done, but it wouldn’t feel like it until I was headed back.  I was starting to see more runners coming back, but it was still a slow trickle compared to the steady stream of runners still going out.

Somewhere between 14 and 15 miles, I saw Julie and Miles again.  Julie briefly ran alongside me, so we could talk.  Before the race, I had told her my pace would probably be around 10 minutes per mile.  She said I was right on pace.  I told her I would be much slower the rest of the way.

I saw a pace group coming back.  It was the four-hour group.  Up until now, I had only seen one pace group.  That was the 4:15 group, who passed me a few miles into the race.  I knew about how far back I was from the 4:00 group, so I finally had an idea how much farther it was to the turn.

When I finally reached the turn, I looked at my watch.  I was reading 15.45 miles.  I was finding the greenway to be tiring.  It was about 7.5 miles going out.  Now I had to run the same 7.5 miles in the opposite direction before I would get back onto city streets.  I didn’t realize it yet, but there were long downhill sections going out that would be uphill coming back.

Somewhere around 16 miles, I briefly felt a breeze.  It felt good, but it wasn’t there for very long.  I realized this was the first time in the race that I had felt any wind.  It would also be the last time.

The greenway was well-shaded.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the same trees that sheltered us from the sun also blocked the wind.  There was never much wind to begin with, but the breeze couldn’t reach us here.  A little wind would’ve helped mitigate the high humidity.  Instead, there was no relief.

I recognized a bend in the trail where I had last seen Julie and Miles.  I saw them again.  I told them my pace the rest of the way would probably be 11 minutes per mile.  As it turns out, that was wildly optimistic.

Coming back, I struggled more with the hills.  I noticed long tiring hills that I wasn’t expecting.  Obviously, I had already run these same hills in the downhill direction, but I didn’t notice how long or steep they were.

I was expecting to see Julie and Miles again at 20 miles.  That was roughly the same spot where I first saw them.  I knew I would have to climb a short but steep hill to get up to the street where I saw them before.  As I came within sight of that hill, I saw some flashing lights.  There was a bicycle and a motorcycle.  A pair of EMTs were attending to a running who was down.

When I saw Julie again, she said she and Miles would see me at the finish.  I was tempted to provide an estimate of when I would finish, but I realized anything I said might be misleading.  I really didn’t know how much more I might slow down.  I was hanging on by a thread.

As two runners passed me, I heard one of them say, “Three more.  Three more.  Three more brutal miles, and then we’re home free.”  I assume he was referring to having three more miles along the greenway before we got back onto streets.  I didn’t know about the “home free” part.  Maybe he knew something I didn’t.  All I knew is that we had three more miles along the greenway, and I couldn’t wait for them to be over.

At most of the aid stations, I drank either water or a sports drink.  I didn’t feel like I was drinking enough.  At one of the aid stations, a volunteer was meeting runners well before the aid station.  I took the opportunity to get a cup of water from him and also get a cup of sports drink a minute later at the aid station.

As I was getting close to 21 miles, I encountered a hill that was too tiring.  It was longer and steeper than any of the other hills I had encountered.  I had to walk the rest of it.  I planned to walk this one hill and then run the rest of the race.

When I reached what I thought was the top of the hill, I rounded a corner and saw that it was still uphill.  That happened three times.  I walked the entire hill.  It seemed like I was walking for several minutes.

When I finished that mile, I was pleasantly surprised to see my time for that mile was 13:02.  I thought it would be slower.  Maybe I wasn’t walking for as long as I thought.  Alternatively, maybe my running pace going up a hill wasn’t that much faster than my walking pace.

After that hill, I came around a familiar bend and the course briefly leveled out.  I saw two runners who had stopped at the side of the trail.  Then I saw another runner curled up on the ground between them.  The conditions were getting dangerous.  The temperature was now in the upper 70s, and the humidity was still oppressive.  In some cities, they would cancel the race under these conditions.  I wanted to run the rest of the way, but I had to respect the heat and humidity.  The rest of the way, I walked every hill.

At some point, I wondered if I should be pouring water on my head.  I knew from experience how effective that can be when you’re overheating.  I also knew from experience that some of the water would end up in my shoes, and I would develop painful blisters.  I wasn’t willing to accept that trade-off.

Somewhere between 22 and 23 miles, I heard drums in the distance.  I remembered passing a large drum band earlier in the race.  My recollection was that they were right where we entered the greenway.  Now that I could hear them again, I knew I was getting close.

When I reached the drums, I turned onto a street.  Was I home free?  Looking ahead, I saw a long downhill section.  Would it be mostly downhill to the finish?  I got my answer soon.

I saw runners on the other side of the street going the opposite direction.  It was a short out-and-back section.  Going out it was downhill.  You know what that means.

After crossing the street and starting up the hill, I asked myself if I could run most of it and only walk the steeper part at the end.  I couldn’t.  I had to walk almost all of the hill.

After that out-and-back, the rest of the course was a fairly direct route into downtown.  It was far more downhill than uphill, and I had to walk anything that was even remotely uphill.  With about two miles to go, I found that I couldn’t run an entire mile, even if it was all either downhill or flat.  I had to include some walking.  I was at my limit.  I needed to do a run/walk mix to get to the finish.

I passed several restaurants that I remembered passing earlier in the race.  That didn’t give me any awareness of where I was.  When I passed them earlier, it was after making so many turns that I never knew where I was in relationship to downtown.

I saw one restaurant that didn’t remember seeing before.  It was called Insomnia Cookies.  Their sign said they deliver warm cookies late in the evening.

With less than half a mile to go, I finally made a turn and saw a long downgrade in front of me.  I couldn’t see all the way to the finish, but what I could see was all downhill.  A volunteer in the middle of the street told me there were two more turns.  Knowing that helped frame my expectations.

I forced myself to run all the way down this hill.  As I passed the “26” sign, I looked at my watch.  I was going to break 4:40 if I ran the rest of the way.  I wouldn’t have cared at this point, but I knew Julie and Miles would be watching for me.

When I made the next turn, I could see that it was still downhill most of the way to the last turn.  I also saw the “13” sign for the half marathon.  I just needed to hang in there for a little over a minute.

When I made the last turn, I could see the finish.  I could also see that the approach to the finish was downhill.  I needed that.  I saw Julie and Miles in the crowd.

I crossed the line in 4:38:11.  I wanted to rush back to where I saw Julie and Miles, but first I had to stagger forward to the end of the finisher chute.

The finisher medal was in the shape of an acorn.  It included a spinner that depicted an oak tree.  It was an appropriate medal for a race called “City of Oaks.”

When I finished the race, it was 79 degrees, and the dew point was 67.  My first priority after finishing was rehydrating.  I accepted a water bottle from one of the volunteers and starting drinking immediately.  I never noticed what kinds of post-race food were available.  I didn’t feel like eating anything.

Julie and Miles met me shortly after I finished.  I found a place where I could sit down, and we talked until I was able to walk back to the hotel.

I had a small package of trail mix in my room.  That was as much as I could eat.  I finished my water and made a cup of tea.  I always take a hot bath after a race, but I had to be careful not to get the water too hot.  I was cooling down, but it wouldn’t take much for me to overheat again.  I just wanted the water to be warm enough to relax my legs, so I could do some stretches.

Later, I had dinner with Julie and Miles at Raleigh Beer Garden.  There were still hundreds of beers that I had not yet sampled.  We had a nice visit.  We were at the restaurant for two and a half hours.

That night, I slept for 10 hours.  I felt much better in the morning.  I didn’t feel sore or stiff, but I still felt dehydrated.  Physically, I’ll be back to normal within a few days.  Recovering from the psychological toll may take longer.  When you struggle this badly in a race, it can really shake your confidence.

Race statistics:

Distance:  26.2 miles

Time:  4:38:11

Average Pace:  10:37

Lifetime Marathons/Ultras:  469